I watched him reach up on top of a shelf and take hold of something long and brown to bring down just as I heard Karen say, “Hi! I’m here,” as she opened the screened door to step in.

I turned to look at her with a big smile when I heard a loud noise like a car muffler’s pop and then saw Karen fall back onto the cement, never getting inside the door.

While sitting at my desk writing about the vivid memories of my childhood — specifically when I was seven, almost eight, when I lost my friend Charlotte — I can’t stop crying. Why am I sobbing about the loss of my friend so many years later, when I didn’t shed a tear at the time? I kept asking myself.

In retrospect, it seemed that when the ball of death started rolling, it wasn’t going to stop. But we didn’t realize the ball started rolling with Charlotte, and it would gain such disastrous momentum.

He had never lifted a hand to punish me for anything in my life up to that point. He would let me know his disapproval when it was needed, and I might be grounded for doing something I should have known better not to do, but he never spanked me. At least not until after the church interfered.